Derailed: Fast Track to Nowhere

April 24th - 30th is National Medical Laboratory Professionals Week. I happen to be one of those professionals for which this week is dedicated to. At a small hospital in the burbs of Utah I am a humble specimen processor. Fluids, blood, tissue, and other various creepy things from the human body come in, I process 'em and send 'em off for testing. It's a behind the scenes kinda job that is an integral part of health care. This gig fell into my lap - the working gears of life synchronized nicely to position me into a good job at a great facility. I am blessed to be working and making money - I'm grateful everyday I'm not in the gaping maw of unemployment.

That being said (and sincerely so) this is not where I want to be in life. Just one year ago, I was on a train heading toward an actual career. Flashback to the Fall of 2009: an eager, ever so slightly younger college student proudly walks across the grounds of Salt Lake Community College. Weighed down by a bundle of text books, but uplifted by the prospect of learning a craft close to my heart, I walked through the glass doors of the Health and Sciences building - my first literal step into becoming an Occupational Therapy Assistant (OTA).

After a year of vacillating between possible career paths (psychology? business perhaps?) a wave of inspiration fell upon me. Following my family down the track of health care, I decided on OTA school, my late grandfather serving as encouragement to the decision. In the last years of his life, my grad-dad suffered a massive stroke, robbing him of his normal day-to-day functions. With the help of an Occupational Therapist to reteach him the tasks necessary to live a normal life, he was able to leave this world with a fair amount of independence and dignity. And that was the mark I wanted to leave on Earth - equipped with tools of the trade and compassion, I desired to enter a person's life at possibly their lowest point, and help them surpass tragedy and illness to achieve an independent, well-functioning existence.

With all my prerequisites under my belt, I was accepted into the OTA program. The only OTA program offered in all of Utah, it was a pretty sweet deal. Only two years of study with a projected base pay of $23/hr out the door. Unfortunately, I didn't make it past the first year. Some might call it cruel fortune, others would say "It's life throwing you a curve ball." Personally, I call it a case of cold-hearted bitchery.

All of my hopes, aspirations and hard work had the life choked out of them by a rampant disease I couldn't have foreseen. The program was plagued by the same person who was deemed its coordinator (and I use the term "coordinator" very, very loosely). Unscrupulous, robotic and at times horribly incompetent, this individual cared more about a glowing reputation - conceived through a facade of fakery - than actually taking pride in teaching those who would eventually become peers. (You may think I am using creative license or exaggeration, but I am actually being utterly real here - just ask the other 18 students who have been bogged down by the caustic tyranny) When this person's methods and motivations were put under scrutiny, a toxic backlash began to slowly and surely rise to the surface. A wrath incurred, grades were hijacked, assignments "lost," time and attention to teaching cast away to languish by the wayside.

I don't know if it was a personal distaste for me, or if it was to prove a point (me thinks a combination of the two), but I was put on "necessary" probation which eventually led to a dismissal from the program. Lured into what I thought would be a meeting of reconciliation, I had to sit through a humiliating prosecution where two "mentors" accused me of slacking, cheating, lying and exercising other sorts of unethical behavior. Injury, meet insult. My good name and self esteem were ran through the mud and trampled on.

So ended my career. And a week from now, my former fellow classmates are graduating (ironic side note: April also happens to be OT month). They survived. I wish I had. It's hard to shake off the brick in my gut, mortared to my insides by loss and disappointment. My peers - and my friends that I miss dearly - have accomplished something great. And here I sit. At an entry-level job blogging about how I'm not accomplishing anything.

I can't say my time in the program was a total waste. I met some marvelous people. Including the woman who I credit with pushing me in the direction of meeting the man I love. I'm not a firm believer in the old adage "things happen for a reason." I believe in "fate" and "destiny" in the poetic sense. It makes happenstance or coincidence seem much more magical. But the cynical side of me wants to think that I was part of that class for the time I was supposed to be. That I met the people I needed to and life - in all it's ambiguous cosmic glory - sent me down a different track. Sure, this track does include the affections of a doctor, which in and of itself would seem like a great accomplishment. Yet I still feel empty. Inadequate.

I wish on my train to nowhere I could see past the unknown void. I need a glimmer of some sort to show me where my next destination should be. Or to know that, just because the horizon is shrouded from view, I am indeed headed somewhere worthwhile.

But for now, it's just the sound of a doubtful "click clack, click clack" and a melancholy "choo choo."